


An Empty Space

by MostlySense8NotGonnaLie



Category: Sense8 (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Mild Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-20
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-06-13 13:58:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 4,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15366168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MostlySense8NotGonnaLie/pseuds/MostlySense8NotGonnaLie
Summary: The cluster feels the grief of having Will separate from them for so long.  As they experience their sadness together, they do the only thing they can - go to Riley and watch over Will together.This is going to be done in seven chapters, looking at the situation from each sensate's point of view - except maybe Riley's, I'm not sure yet.  Mostly because I only have a few done right now and I wanted to get something up!





	1. Sun

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written fanfiction since I was like 13, and I haven't posted writing of any kind online since probably then! So I fully welcome constructive criticism, but please try to be kind!

Sun hadn’t minded solitary confinement all that much up to this point, honestly. Her cluster came and went like a revolving door. She didn’t mind that, either, though she noticed the frequency of visits increasing the more time they spent separate from Will. And peace was hard to find these days, which had little to do with her prison cell and more to do with the constant tumult of thoughts and emotions washing through her like water. Few were her own. Though she did her best to remain centered, Sun could rarely find the boundaries between herself and her... selves. She was used to her inner quiet. She liked her inner quiet. It was something that she usually did her best to share with the cluster when she felt them brush against her mind, and in these darkening days, it seemed a comfort much appreciated by all of them.  
  
Today was an exception in a few ways. No one visited outright, although Sun still felt them. She wasn’t called to any of them, either, which was fine, but for the fact that maybe she wouldn’t have minded the company. Her cell was empty. Perhaps on another day, Sun would have enjoyed the reprieve. But today, despite the outer quiet, her inner quiet was amiss. For a long moment she thought that maybe she was missing her cellmates, but although she truly liked all three of them, that wasn’t the answer.  
  
No, the sense of missing someone was like a string that started in her chest and ran to the center of all of her clustermates. If she closed her eyes and sought out the loneliness in her heart, she could feel the way that it echoed down her string and into the others, just as the feeling flowed from the others into her.  
  
Instinctively, she reached for the person they were all missing, but she simply found empty space. Will was still cut off from them. The drugs that kept him, all of them, safe also kept him separate. To be so much a part of each others’ lives now was something marvelous, but to have one of them missing tainted it. Sun could also feel the grief inside Riley, not stronger than the rest, but different. Though they could all still connect with Riley just as easily as any other time, she was still separate in a way that deepened their hardship. Not just due to the echoing sadness inside of her - born from being separate from Will, from watching him waste away in front of her - but also from exhaustion. Sun knew that Riley was flagging. Her love for Will and the encouragement from her clustermates had kept her going so far, but she was hollowing. There was no joy inside of Riley now, no beat pulsing music through her veins. Visiting Riley was easy, but sharing with Riley was hard. They all kept it up, Sun knew, but it took a toll on all of them.  
  
And today, the grief of Will’s separateness was worse than others. Perhaps it stemmed from Riley, who Sun had felt restlessly awake throughout the previous Amsterdam night, but it echoed through all of them and left holes. They all missed him. It felt different and the same, coming from each of them, as they experienced their own feelings of sadness and the cluster’s.  
  
Sun felt Riley’s pain, her weariness, and did the only thing she could think to do. Reaching for her brought the hideout into sharp focus, and suddenly cold concrete was warm floorboards under Sun’s bare feet. Light filtered into the dingy room through gaps in the paper covering the windows, but it was still mostly dark. Sun might have preferred her prison cell to the pain in that little room, but she felt Riley’s burden ease ever so slightly when she stood next to the dingy mattress, so there she stayed.


	2. Capheus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Capheus' viewpoint on the empty space where Will should be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one hasn't been beta read or anything either, so please forgive (and feel free to point out!) any mistakes!

Capheus smiled at everyone he passed on the street. He’d thought a break from the driver’s seat in the bus, a walk among the busy street of Nairobi, would help him feel a little less… distant. Jela was off the bus as well, running errands or something in their break before the return trip. Instead of helping him feel more connected, though, Capheus felt overwhelmed. The noise, the people, the movement; he almost always loved being among people, but in this moment it was just too much.  
  
Noise pressed in around him. He gasped a little and realized that tears were rolling down his face when he finally reached the bus. He stumbled his way to the driver’s door and scrambled into his seat, slamming the door behind him and trying to get enough breath into his lungs. But with the loud crack of the door, the noise from the outside hushed, and Capheus realized that it wasn’t solely responsible for the feelings choking him.  
  
It wasn’t just loneliness inside him today. Sadness had snuck in and spread in his chest, a pressure that was making it hard to breathe. It took what felt like ages to get himself breathing properly again, but the weight in him wouldn’t go away.  
  
With his breath came sobs, sudden and shocking as they roiled up from his gut and squeezed around his heart. For a long, desperately painful moment, Capheus couldn’t understand what was happening to him. But then, as quick as his thought, came the pull of his cluster. Their connections tugged at him, all of them. All except one.  
  
And suddenly Capheus understood. He reached for Will, knowing that he’d find nothing but empty space where that path should be. And then he just let himself sob. To feel the joy of connection, of experiencing each other and being wholly one, just to be left desperately missing one eighth of that wholeness… it was impossibly difficult.  
  
They’d all been managing - spending more time together, sitting watch with and over Riley, doing everything they could to be one again - but today, it was just too much. Capheus knew that he wasn’t the only one. He felt the others’ grief as acutely as he felt his own, as acutely as he’d felt their pleasure and joy and anger, and ultimately, their strength. It was never a doubt in his mind that being connected strengthened each of them. They were fierce in their fury, ecstatic in their pleasure. Even when they grieved together, there was strength within each of them, for they all knew that never were they alone.  
  
So Capheus did the only thing he knew to do. He sunk deeper into that knowledge of safety and togetherness and went to Riley. Sun was already there, standing at Riley’s side and watching, helpless to do anything but be present, and Capheus didn’t have the grandeur to think he could do any better. He gave Sun the bravest smile he could muster and her wise eyes welcomed him, but Riley and Will never moved. Will looked deep in his high, unconscious and still. Riley was curled next to him, eyes open but exhausted, watching the rise and fall of Will’s chest unerringly. Sighing deeply, Capheus seated himself on Will’s side of the bed, leaning against the wall and hoping that his watchful eyes on Will might help ease the immense weight inside of Riley.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who is next? Who knows? I haven't written it yet, so definitely not me! I think Wolfgang is going to be second to last, and then like a group shot. I'm going to go listen to more sad songs from the Sense8 soundtrack and maybe shoot at writing Nomi or Kala


	3. Nomi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nomi's point of view on missing Will.

Nomi wasn’t really listening to Amanita as she chatted about an event that had gone on at the bookstore earlier in the night. It wasn’t that she wasn’t interested - normally she loved listening to her girlfriend get excited about… well… just about anything. After a shift of Neets’, Nomi was almost always happy to help her decompress and to hear about the goings-on at the shop. Tonight, though, her brain felt out of focus.  
  
It had for the last few hours, honestly. She was endlessly grateful for the friends that were letting the both of them stay in their shelter - she knew how much danger their presence posed - but she couldn’t help but go a little nuts when she was stuck in the room alone all day. Still, Nomi hesitated to chalk this brain fog up to her stir-craziness today. Instead of the pulsing need to get out, to have the sun on her face, to wander through Nairobi’s streets with Capheus or sit in Lito’s jacuzzi, she felt withdrawn. Isolated. And terribly, terribly sad.  
  
She’d actually stayed in their little bed since Amanita had left. She’d poked around on her laptop for a while, sure, but she hadn’t done anything productive. For most of her alone time, Nomi had stared at the ceiling, unable to sleep, with tears in her eyes. It felt shitty, and Nomi didn’t know how to deal with it.  
  
But thank goodness for Amanita. At some point in her story, she’d realized that Nomi was out of it, lost in herself. Nomi’s eyes snapped to her girlfriend as she trailed off with a concerned look in her eyes.  
  
“Sorry, Neets, what?” Nomi’s voice felt too loud and sharp in her own ears, like it was disturbing something inside of her.  
  
Amanita shook her head. “Don’t worry about it, Nom.” She plopped down on the bed next to Nomi and tugged her to lay cuddled up comfortably. “What’s going on? Is it the cluster?”  
  
Nomi sighed and snuggled up appreciatively. The contact didn’t ease the heavy sadness inside of her chest, but it did make her feel a little less like she had to carry it alone. “I guess so,” she murmured quietly. “It’s awful today. I feel like there’s a gaping hole in my chest, like it’s a hollow cavern full of sad.”  
  
Neets hummed and cradled Nomi close. “I know you’re all having a tough time right now.”  
  
It was true, they were. Most days, they were managing Will’s… absence pretty well. But Nomi knew that today wasn’t one of those days. Now, finally, tears started to trickle down Nomi’s face, dripping down onto Amanita’s shirt. She cried quietly, but Amanita understood and stroked her hair softly.  
  
“Go to them.”  
  
So Nomi did. She reached for Will out of instinct, and finding the empty space there was jarring, even though she’d expected it. So instead, she reached for Riley, who she knew was exactly where she always was - watching Will, loving him as best as she could. Sun and Capheus were there, too, and Nomi realized that part of her sadness was the echoes of her clustermates. They only barely acknowledged each other, with Riley not looking up at all, but Nomi knew that her presence was felt.  
  
It was all Nomi could do to swallow the shuddering gasp in her throat at the sight of Will, shivering and sweating and hollow on the bed. When had he gotten so very bad? Realizing that her raw thoughts were likely not helping Riley, she fought them down and instead perched on one of the long, low cabinets near the bed. It was covered in dust, but Nomi didn’t care. She just needed to be here, with her cluster, in helpless but hopeful silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Probably Lito next?


	4. Lito

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lito's viewpoint

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took forever to get out. Honestly I wrote the first few while I was in a depressive episode and needed some time to make sure I was back in a healthy headspace before I could come back to it. But here I am! Thank you so much to those of you who commented and left kudos! You all made my day!

Lito was in that twilight nowhere between asleep and awake - Hernando sprawled across his chest, Daniella curled up somewhere past Hernando - when he felt the first dregs of sadness grip him by the ankles. Behind him was bed, warm and soft and beloved. Somewhere beyond his reach were Sun’s prison cell, Capheus’s driver’s seat, Nomi’s room at the women’s shelter… But they were all lonely, which was rare these days.  
  
It was no secret that Lito loved them all. He loved sharing worlds and feelings and presence, even when he didn’t understand it. He treasured them even when he thought he’d rather be alone. Tonight, though, as he stared into all the windows where his drowsy soul could take him, he felt himself held instead firmly in his sleepless nowhere. He was firmly mired in something tragic and heavy, gripping him now up to his knees.  
  
It seeped below Lito’s skin as it sucked him in, making him ache. Tearing up, he clutched at his legs, at the heartbreak now creeping up his thighs, trying desperately to free himself, but he only made it worse. The dark nowhere clung to his hands instead of receding. Lito choked on a sob and flung his hands wildly to no avail; it oozed up his hips and his forearms steadily.  
  
Though fully aware that the rest of his cluster-family thought of him as a drama queen, Lito couldn’t stop himself from screaming out for help. Why were they all so far apart? Why didn’t Sun turn her head toward him? Couldn’t Capheus and Nomi hear him through their tears? His own sobs echoed through the nowhere surrounding him, and he thought he could hear, or feel, the tears of the others. Never alone again, no matter what.  
  
The nowhere was up to his chest and Lito was sure it was harder to breathe. Was it Hernando laying on his chest somewhere behind him? Maybe, but he couldn’t have moved to ease his lover away. More likely, though, was that the weight of the nowhere, the sadness and the loneliness, were a weight inside of him. Lito felt the weight then for what it was - his entire cluster crying out in pain. Crying out and reaching for the missing part of their collective soul.  
  
Will was something to all of them; he completed their circle in a way that none of the rest of them could make up. To Lito he was level-headedness and a kind of modesty and a steady hand, and he’d been missing for so painfully long. The nowhere was up to Lito’s throat now, and he felt his panic rising with it. He didn’t handle being alone terribly well, but even more than that was the emptiness. It felt different from his separation from Hernando, but not entirely dissimilar. It was still an ache. It was still a hole inside of himself. And it still felt a little like dying.  
  
The nowhere oozed up Lito’s face and he knew, then, that all he could do was close his eyes, letting tears flow down his cheeks and into the darkness, and gasp in one last breath before the end consumed him. So he did.  
  
And opened his eyes, not in his bed with the love of his life, but in a dimly lit room. He should have felt warm - golden light trickled in between cracks in walls - but all Lito could feel was chill. It was Riley’s chill, he realized as his eyes ran over her and Will on the bed. Others were there too, Sun and Capheus and Nomi, and all of them looked like he felt. But Will looked the worst of all of them. Lito thought he was probably in the twilight nowhere that Lito had just left - not asleep or awake but just… drifting. Wherever he was in his heroin-fueled haze, none of them could reach him. Riley was almost as unreachable, with every fiber of her being pressing against the severed connection between her and Will. But she knew he was there, just as he was sure she knew the others were there. So he glanced around the room and silently, which he would admit was something of a rarity, took a seat in a threadbare armchair, doing all he could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to shoot for Kala next I think.


	5. Kala

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kala's view on the empty space that Will has left in them

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kala was 100% the hardest to write. I've been sitting on this for like a month because I just couldn't get it. Sooo I spat out whatever I could. On that confident note, here you go!

Kala read the third paragraph of the report in front of her for the seventh or eighth time before finally giving up. She shoved backwards from her desk and slammed the report closed far harder than she needed to, which in turn blew papers fluttering about her office. A shocking wave of fury rose like hot bile in her throat and she had to choke on a frustrated scream. She stomped her foot like a petulant child and realized a second too late that she’d opened the floodgates.  
  
Tears trickled down her cheeks, which only angered Kala further. She stormed to the door and almost slammed it, catching it a millimeter before it startled the whole floor into dropping their glass beakers. Taking a deep breath to steady herself and finding it mostly useless, Kala eased the door shut and locked it. As she turned to rest her back against the closed door, the room rippled around the edges, almost giving way to somewhere dusty, somewhere cooler than Mumbai, somewhere full of grief and longing.  
Kala felt her heart pull her toward that room, but she’d gotten good at crossing her arms and huffing about her heartstrings. Her eyes brimming with tears, she stared pointedly at the ceiling as it wavered back and forth between ceiling tiles and worn wooden boards. It took her a few seconds of angrily wiping away at her face before she realized that every moment she spent fighting the pull was hurting her deeper and deeper, yanking control from her grasp.  
  
So Kala closed her eyes in resignation and opened them in sadness.  
  
Riley looked like hell, although she shared a common - it felt - sentiment that Will looked far worse. His breathing stuttered and, though there was no true reason for it, Riley’s stuttered in time. Her eyes were hollow and bruised, and Kala thought she looked awfully dehydrated and malnourished. Still, Riley wouldn’t let Kala touch her these days; she wanted all hands on deck, and Riley’s deck was Will.  
  
Seeing - no, feeling other clustermates scattered among the room like useless lumps did nothing to ease Kala’s upset, so she scoffed at them and went digging for the box of medical supplies next to the bed. Riley didn’t move. Will twitched in his drugged stupor but didn’t seem to have any connection to the physical (Mental? Emotional? Kala still had no idea) world around him. So she took his pulse, trying to ignore her shaking hands. She listened to his lungs, trying not to hear her own staccato breath. She lit his pupils, trying not to feel the emptiness behind them in her own soul.  
  
Kala tended to him as best she could until she realized she was just making busy work. At some point around then her eyes clouded too heavily with tears to see anyway, so she shoved her tools back into the box and jammed it back under the bed. No one in the room moved. Kala wanted to scream at them to do something, but what? She wanted to throw something, but at who? The pointless emptiness of it all threatened to overwhelm her, so she did the best she could and simply dropped to the floor, finding the wall she leaned against much warmer than she had anticipated.  
  
Maybe Kala didn’t know how all this worked. Yet. Maybe she hadn’t found a clear answer. But that didn’t mean it didn’t twist like a knife in her gut when the eight of them… no. The seven of them… grieved together. It was massive. And just because she didn’t understand why the eight of them were brought together didn’t mean that she didn’t feel it keenly when one of them was missing. Will being so far from them for so long had caught up to her, she realized, as she sat silently, in pained guard over Will. She’d been feeling it, like all of them had. It had simply caught up to her last.  
  
Wait.  
  
No.  
  
Not last, she realized. One of them still hadn’t come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well kids, I think we all know who has yet to come to them. Wolfgang is next, and then I'll work out a short come-together chapter.


	6. Wolfgang

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wolfgang's POV on missing Will

Wolfgang had never been the lonely type, largely considering himself better off alone and having Felix nearby for all the times he craved company. Being connected to his cluster had changed him, and at times like this, he wondered if it was for the better.  
  
Times like, of course, missing them. Missing Will.  
  
He snorted to himself and thought about what Felix would say to him missing the presence of a police officer, much less being psychically linked to one. Wolfgang could hardly differentiate missing Felix from missing Will, anyway. Maybe with Felix around, he wouldn’t feel like a chunk of his soul had been carved out. Maybe. But the Felix-sized hole and the Will-sized hole were different, and he thought he could feel the lines between them if he dwelled for long enough. But even though he was deeply prone to melodrama (which he’d never admit to himself), dwelling on his losses had never been pleasurable  
  
Doing everything he could not to think of Kala and loss in the same thought, he shook his head and tipped back a shot. He still hadn’t gotten used to reaching out to his other… selves. He didn’t have a problem helping them when they needed him, which was often enough to keep him hopping, but he could generally handle himself. Still, there was something pleasant about being connected to them, even when they weren’t directly visiting.  
  
Lito’s flair for the dramatic amused him, and his passion ignited Wolfgang’s own. Capheus’s unbridled joy made him remember what it was like to feel that way himself, something he hadn’t known much in his life. Riley always had music in her soul and movement in her heart - she was something of a kindred spirit to him in a way, and he truly enjoyed her company. Sun was, even more than Riley, like him; her rage and strength and power dripped like ice in her veins and made even him a little nervous. Of course, to be connected with Sun meant he shared her rage and strength and power, though his burned inside him rather than chilling him to the bone, but he was glad all the same that Sun was on his side. Nomi’s mind was clear, her wit was sharp, and her soul held something old and wise that eased him in some way. Kala… aside from everything he felt for Kala, if he could even put that aside, she was brilliant and quick and soft, and something in her made something in him feel whole. In comparison to his time with the others, Wolfgang had had very little time to get to know Will. But he knew that Will was brave and stubborn, full of life and a goodness that Wolfgang wasn’t sure he understood. Will was good to his core and, disgustingly enough, made Wolfgang want to be a better person.  
  
He actually missed that.  
  
Wolfgang was already expecting what he saw when he turned his head from where he sat on his couch. On a mattress that wasn’t his, laying on a floor that wasn’t his, covered in tattered blankets that weren’t his, was Riley. Her faded t shirt and jeans were clean, but her hair was unkempt and she looked more tired than he’d yet seen her. She was curled up, head on a pillow, sleepy eyes watching Will’s prone form as best they could. Wolfgang saw Will like Riley saw him - with sunken, bruised eyes and pale skin, looking less and less like the man they all knew. Sweat soaked through Will’s clothes, and Wolfgang could see how thin he was. Looking at Will, so lost and alone inside himself, made something in Wolfgang’s chest hurt, and he couldn’t tell if that hurt was his, or Riley’s, or, more likely, shared between all of them. They were waiting for him, it seemed, all present around the weathered mattress. Just… waiting.  
  
Sun, Capheus, Nomi, Lito, Kala. And him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've actually had Wolfgang's chapter written since I started this. 
> 
> For my last act, we'll get a group view.


	7. Cluster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The cluster does the only thing they can do - they handle their sadness together.

United in grief, because while they hadn’t lost him, to be so apart from Will for so long was taking a terrible toll on them all. Something was missing, and they all felt it acutely. Riley’s pain echoed through them wearily, and some instinctual part of all of them reached for Will on and off, only to find an empty space. Was it easier or harder to bear that empty space when they could see Will in front of them, not truly gone, just… separate? None of them had the answer.  
  
Riley hadn’t spoken to them, hadn’t looked away from Will, but they all knew that she felt their presence. Something inside of her called to them, grasped at them with tired hands just searching for a lifeboat. It was all they could do not to cry out as one. Tears glittered in all of their eyes. None of them knew who moved first, they more likely all moved together, but in a split second they were all slipping silently on to the mattress.  
  
Riley moved, then, for the first time - shifted to wrap around Will, her hands needy and only finding partial satisfaction on his physical body. Sun curled up over Riley’s legs and wrapped her arms around them, comforting and seeking her own comfort. Nomi eased down on Will’s other side to brush his damp hair from his face. Capheus positioned himself carefully around Will’s legs, making sure he knew that they were with him physically, at least. Lito leaned much of his weight against Nomi’s legs and wrapped his arm around Will’s middle a few inches below Riley’s. Wolfgang eased down behind Riley, pressing his chest to her back and, feeling her relief in the cluster’s contact, slipped his arms around her so that he brushed against Will too. Without a thought, the whole cluster reached for each other - holding hands, intertwining limbs, just seeking each other in the best way they knew. They began to breathe as one, to grieve as one, and to hold each other with everything they had.  
  
Soon. Soon it would be over and they would be whole again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading my little story! I'd like to write other stuff for Sense8 sooner or later! I hope you enjoyed this!


End file.
